Having a good image viewer on your system is a must, especially if your photo collection spans across many gigabytes and includes thousands of pictures. Among the best solutions out there, XnView aims to offer a pleasant experience to all users.

Packing so many features that it can challenge even the likes of IrfanView, this application comes with support for a huge list of file types.

Tabbed UI to open multiple pics

The interface is very easy to understand and highly-customizable. All the functions are at hand and the fact that the GUI supports tabs is a great addition. You can open as many images as you want and then simply move from tab to tab instead of reusing the same canvas for loading the pictures.

Integrates a rich context menu

Right-click any picture you want and a whole new dimension opens its doors. The context menu allows you to start a batch conversion or renaming, send a photo to a friend by e-mail, move or copy it to a certain folder, tag and rate it, set it as wallpaper and many other things.

You should note that the right-click menus for images loaded in their tab and for those displayed in the file browser are different, so there are indeed a lot of goodies under the hood that wait for you to uncover.

Fast batch conversion

What we found really impressive during our test was the quick conversion feature that enables you to right click a photo or select multiples, and turn them into JPEG, TIFF, BMP and PNG formats in a second. Also, the list of transformations you can add to a set of photos you are about to convert is astounding.

A last evaluation

All things considered, XnView is definitely one of the best tools of its kind, so if you are looking for a photo viewer, converter and manager, this one should be among the top picks. The system’s performance is not going to be hampered, the response time is good and the interface is more than easy-to-handle.

A portable edition is also available for download, called Portable XnView, so that you do not have to go through the installation process.